What is great story? For the editors of this collection it is one that generations of readers can't stop talking about, and that we return to again and again because they are not easily exhausted. Several examples from this collection stand out: Chekov's The Lady with a Dog, Mansfield's Her First Ball, Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper, and Carver's Cathedral. I mention those four because I've read them many times, and they always repay another reading. Whether all the stories in this collection satisfy the editors' definition is a little bit more debatable, but there are many hours of enjoyable reading to be had from this book.

The Omnibus is a big book, at almost 700 pages. It contains short fiction in four forms: twenty-five short stories; nine examples of 'sudden' fiction, sometimes called 'flash' fiction, two novellas and three graphic stories. It begins with the oldest story, Balzac's A Passion in the Desert and samples stories from succeeding generations of writers up to Alison Bechdel's 2006 graphic story A Happy Death. Most stories are American, but the short stories in particular cover a range of nationalities, including Russia, India, New Zealand, Canada, France and England. In style, most are realist, but that description covers a range of styles, including Poe's gothic thriller The Black Cat, Melville's miniature epic Benito Cereno and many moral fables, such as T. Coraghessan Boyle's Greasy Lake. Overall the Omnibus is as good a sampling of short fiction as you are likely to get. The editors have done well in mixing the great names of fiction with those of lesser known writers.

By the given definition of "great" some of the selections are simply not old enough to be great stories as they are too recent to have been discussed by generations of readers. This particularly applies to the graphic stories and sudden fictions. They have clearly been included on promise, and it will be for future generations to declare them "great" or not. There are others that were wide of the mark for me, despite their authors' reputations. I found Sartre's The Wall, Baldwin's Sonny's Blues and Thom's The Pugilist at Rest overly didactic. There can be a fine line between using fiction to make a social or political point and laboring that point, and I felt those three strayed over that line. I found Mary Gordon's The Baby labored and clichéd, and a surprising inclusion amongst literature of this quality. Still, this is only one man's opinion, so no-one should be deterred by it.

Any reader will have their own idea of the world's best short stories, and no doubt any collection would attract a few criticisms for its exclusions. For myself the names I would have wanted to include are Kafka, Borges, Nabokov, de Maupassant, Joyce, Gordimer, Marquez, and Chopin. I'm glad it wasn't me making the selections, though, as there are some wonderful stories here that I hadn't read. Lawrence Sargent Hall's The Ledge is utterly compelling, with such a palpable sense of doom that I was reluctant to turn the page. Greasy Lake was another revelation to me, a superbly crafted work that exploits all the conventions of narrative fiction. The sudden fiction stories are all fine examples of their craft, and the two novellas provide the satisfaction of an extended read that can nevertheless be enjoyed at a sitting. The three graphic stories each combine powerful storytelling with vivid and moody black and white illustration, lifting the stories well above the stereotypical idea of the comic.

The stories all come with a set of questions at the end, making the Omnibus a useful resource for group discussions. It would make a useful class set, and has perhaps been developed with an eye to the college English literature market. General readers, though, are well catered for with this collection, and will find, as with a box of chocolates, surprises, variation, an impulse to gorge, and a nagging anxiety that each story read takes you closer to the end.

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